Bitner: This team excels at snacking

BETSY BITNER

Published 9:26 pm, Thursday, March 14, 2013

I've never been known for my athletic prowess. This admission comes as no surprise to my high school gym teacher who, after four years of unsuccessfully attempting to teach me the most rudimentary of sport skills, took an early retirement to pursue a less stressful career. Last I heard, she was giving helicopter bungee jumping lessons somewhere over the Rockies.

My children, having drawn the short end of the genetic straw, have followed in my clunky, uncoordinated footsteps. I have to admit I don't really mind. These days, most kids are involved in school teams and travel leagues for multiple sports, often at the same time. Some families thrive on athletic competition. In our house, it's being able to recite from memory all 473 cable channels in order that counts.

***

Don't think our lifestyle comes without pressure. You see, we live in the suburbs, where every minivan is required by law to have a soccer ball magnet attached to its bumper and shin guards are a perfectly acceptable baby gift. Our neighbors' idea of a lazy Sunday afternoon is figuring out how to be at only three athletic fields at the same time instead of the usual four.

As a result, my husband and I have a lot more free time on our hands compared to other parents. While our friends get up at the crack of dawn on weekends to stand on the sidelines in the rain or snow, we're home eating pancakes in our pajamas. And as they debate the merits of traveling to the Comfort Inn in Allentown versus the Holiday Inn in Hoboken for a tournament, because one serves peanuts at the bar while the other has pretzels, we can put our feet up on a Saturday night and watch TV in the comfort of our own home while eating pretzels and peanuts at the same time. Score!

Then it came time for our oldest to apply to college. Her friends began receiving calls from college coaches while our phone sat oddly silent. Apparently, no one was looking to recruit a potential Facebook major with a minor in Pinterest. And some of these kids were getting athletic scholarships. But I told myself that's because they'd focused on sports while my children were more well-rounded. A strategy I began to question as I wrote all those well-rounded zeros on the tuition checks.

My husband and I refer to our oldest as our practice child because we made so many mistakes. (Don't worry; she's 20, and this is a newspaper, so there's no chance she'll ever read this.) There was still time, however, for my other children to jump on the athletic bandwagon.

***

And that's when I came up with a brilliant idea. And by that I mean a hastily thought out plan with no consideration whatsoever of the potential long-term consequences. Our family would run a 5K together.

My announcement was met with the same amount of enthusiasm my family normally reserves for a prune juice commercial in the middle of a SpongeBob episode. This may be due partly to the fact they had no idea how far a K was, let alone five of them. You may be familiar with exotic cultures from foreign lands and already know that 5 kilometers is 3.1 miles. But I've done my best, as a true-blooded American parent, to insist that my family measure things in feet and inches. Once they learn metric, it's a slippery slope to escargot and Smart cars.

They resisted until I bribed them with new sneakers and matching T-shirts. There was a lot of complaining when they discovered there wasn't an app to make the whole thing easier. Then even more complaining when I pointed out this would give us plenty of quality time together.

And while we made it to the finish line in a respectable time, I'm not holding my breath waiting for college track coaches to call. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but it lasted a lot longer than my kids would have liked.

Naturally, we couldn't wait to get home, put our feet up and watch some TV. Somebody pass me the pretzels and peanuts.